Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (27 page)

Once big black petals of pain stopped blossoming behind his eyes, Sandy ventured moving his head and found, to his immense relief, that his neck was not broken, nor was his skull mashed to a pulp. He chanced a look sideways and found a familiar face. King Billy of Orange, done in white marble, tipped over in the fight and saved from smashing his lugubrious face on the floor by landing instead on Sandy’s skull.

Sandy tried to move his right arm out to push the statue away only to meet with several hundred pounds of marble resistance. He was, for all intents and purposes, stuck fast and helpless. Just then he caught a glint of something sharp from the corner of his left eye. He turned his head slowly, the pain in his head still making him dizzy.

Directly in front of him, not more than a few inches from his throat, was the broken end of a bottle held firm in a dense meaty hand. Whiskey still dripped from its squared off edges, a whiff of it serving as smelling salts to his brain. He swallowed, feeling the surge of blood in his neck and how close the veins and arteries ran to the surface of the skin. He looked up the arm and into the eyes of his attacker.

The man was barrel-chested, a sheen of sweat gleaming on his ruddy face, brown eyes filmed by alcohol and bloodlust. Sandy knew men could kill with very little feeling in such a state. He also knew that he was younger, stronger, and quicker and that if he’d an inch of room to maneuver he could disarm the man swiftly. It was part of his training and by now as ingrained as the sound of his own name. But his elbows were pinned hard to his sides by the wall on one side and the statue on the other. His throat bobbed involuntarily, thick with panic. He was, he knew, about to be gutted like a fish.

The sound of his attacker’s wrist snapping was as sharp and hard as the shriek that accompanied it. The man’s face turned pale green and then he slid into a boneless faint, crumpling slowly onto the floor. Sandy half-choked on the acid flooding his mouth, his abrupt salvation surprising him.

“Grab yer pals,” the blue-eyed man said, tipping the statue back into place by levering one broad shoulder under it, his words a terse command, “an’ head out the back.” Sandy obeyed what seemed the most sensible suggestion he’d heard all night. It was likely the police would be here soon, and then there’d be more explaining to do back on base than even a man of tender years had time for. He rounded up Donny and Neil by grabbing the arm of one and yelling in the face of the other. They ran, each with unique bumps and bruises, to the back entrance over the inert forms of the first fallen, through a hedge of woolly chests, and a veritable steaming forest of gashed, cut, contused, broken and bloodied flesh.

Outside the night was cold, their breath making long curling streams on the air.

“Car’s this way,” Sandy’s defender said, emerging from the dark to their left and pointing to a Cortina that sat wedged between a garage and another car. He paused a moment to light a cigarette, the glowing tip throwing a red cast over his face. The effect was particularly demonic.

“What about your friends?” Sandy asked, noting the two other men were nowhere to be seen.

“Joe’s got his own car; they’ll follow where we lead.” Seeing their hesitation he added, “I’ll drive ye back to base, ye’ll not want to be out an’ about. Those haircuts are a dead giveaway an’ word on the street is the Republicans are lookin’ for someone to pay for Martin Diggin’s death.”

The car was blue; the front end slightly dented, but immaculately clean and polished. It seemed this Belfast working tough was a man who cared about his vehicle.

Neil got in the front, Donny sat behind him, and Sandy slid in directly behind the Irishman, who gave himself a once-over in the rearview mirror before putting the keys in the ignition.

“What’s yer names, boys?” their driver asked, raising one large hand to wipe some of the steam off the windshield, while giving a quick glance about at the soldiers that surrounded him.

“I’m Donny,” the youngest spoke first, still high on adrenaline and ale.

‘Donald, eh?” The man grinned as he shifted the car into drive, “As in ‘I’ve just come down from the Isle of Skye, I’m no’ very big an’ I’m awf’ly shy.’

The short Scot lurched forward, face flushed as red as his hair with temper.

“Ach, Donny, sit back,” Neil said, then turned back to the dark-haired man. “If he’d a copper for ev’ry time someone sung that he’d be a rich lad would our Donny. It devils him somethin,’ fierce to hear it.”

“An’ what’s yer name laddie?” The man fixed his gaze in the rear view mirror, meeting Sandy’s eyes directly. Sandy had remained silent to this point, trying to assess the extent of his injuries.

“Alexander,” he said carefully, wary of giving out his name and yet not knowing how to withhold it without seeming rude. Alexander McCrorey had been raised to be polite to a fault. After all, the man had just saved him from a bloody end.

“Do they call ye Sandy then?”

“My friends do,” Sandy replied in a polite tone that could not be mistaken for chumminess.

“And mine,” the man said, with another of those quick, flashing grins into the mirror, “call me Robin, as in ‘for bonny, sweet Robin is all my joy.’ At least,” he gave a wolfish grin, “that’s what the lassies tell me. Now Neil if ye’d be so kind as to reach under the seat there, there’s a bit of somethin’ to keep the blood warm while we drive.”

Neil emerged with a bottle that glinted darkly in the faint glow of the dashboard.

“Have a drink then pass it along Neil, it’s guaranteed to cure all that ails ye.”

Neil took a drink and began to cough immediately. “Holy Christ,” he gasped, passing the bottle onto Robin, who took a long, smooth drink without so much as blinking.

“What the hell is that?” Neil asked, wiping his forearm across his eyes.

“Poteen, an old Irish recipe, me mam could drink it like ‘twas honeyed milk,” Robin said, swinging the car smoothly around and down a dark back lane. Behind them the lights of the other car swung swiftly around the corner as well.

“Tastes like bloody diesel fuel,” Neil said as Robin passed it into the back seat. Not wanting to appear unmanly Donny took a polite swallow, eyes bugging out as he did so. He shoved the bottle under Sandy’s nose and Sandy smelled an aroma that cut his breath off at the top of his throat. Not being beyond the issues of male pride himself, though, he took a tentative sip and thought he might lose use of his taste buds permanently. Neil was right—it did taste like bloody diesel fuel. An uneasy feeling uncoiled in his stomach along with the poteen, which could have had everything to do with the inedible mess rations he’d had that evening, or nothing at all.

Twenty minutes and a few more swallows of whiskey later, and the feeling was considerably eased. The man named Robin chatted amiably as he drove through sleeping neighborhoods. He seemed nice enough, just another working-class swell from the streets of East Belfast. His dad, he said, was a member of the local Orange Lodge, marched in the parades and beat the drums but himself, he didn’t go in for that sort of thing. Live and let live was his motto.

“Would ye boys would be interested in a party?” Robin asked, lighting a new cigarette off the remains of the old one. “I’ve a friend lives out Ballymena way. The place’ll be hoppin’, plenty of girls, three to an arm if ye’ve the inclination.”

“Ach, don’t be tryin’ to tempt Sandy with girls,” Neil said, “he’s got himself a sweetheart back home, he’s devoted is our Sandy.”

“Are ye then, Sandy? It’s a lucky man who finds a good woman to love him.” Drunk as he was Sandy didn’t miss the slightly sneering undertone in the man’s voice. He didn’t let it bother him; man had likely had a few bad experiences with women and now thought none were to be trusted. But he’d known Fiona all his life and had loved her for half that. He trusted her with his very existence.

Fog was beginning to settle into the streets, long floating tendrils of it, the lights coming fewer and far between as they reached the outer perimeters of the city.

Robin slowed the car slightly. “Look up there will ye lads? It’s quite the sight isn’t it?”

The three soldiers obligingly looked up to the left where Robin’s eyes were trained. Sandy had seen it before; one could hardly miss it, nor help but hear the legends that surrounded it and the man that lived within it. Kirkpatrick’s Folly, lit like a brace of candles against the dark sky, on its lonely hill.

“I used to gaze at it when I was a boy, an’ wonder what it was like to live in such a world,” Robin said, a strange note in his voice, an emotion closely related to unquenched yearning, but somehow darker. He shifted the car down, reducing their speed to a near crawl. Sandy had the odd sense of drifting, like a ship lost at sea without anchor. As if the whole world were no more than liquid black sky, with nothing solid to gain purchase upon.

“Is he as handsome as they say?” Donny asked, neck cricked into an unnatural position in an effort to see the house more clearly.

“Aye,” Robin laughed, a stream of smoke accompanying his words, “most bloody gorgeous bastard yer likely to see in yer lifetime.”

“You’ve seen him then?” Neil asked, and Sandy wondered rather fuzzily when he’d started smoking.

“Aye, I’ve seen him,” Robin said, but there was no laughter in his voice this time. Sandy shivered at the tone, even though he was having difficulty keeping his eyes open. He felt the car shift up to a higher gear, was blurrily aware of their speed picking up and the fairy lights of the Kirkpatrick house melting into a brilliant, stinging stream.

He’d one last twinging thought, as the night swallowed the lights of the house on the hill, that he was past the point in his consumption of alcohol where a man was capable of making decent judgements.

Within a minute he was fast asleep.

INSIDE THE PUB, Denny cracked one last skull for good measure then surveyed the wreckage in front of him. Broken glass, cracked table legs, blood and ale mixed in gruesome pools, and plenty of groaning and moaning amidst the carnage.

“Billy,” he said sharply to his son.

Billy looked up from where he was neatly piling glass in a dustpan.

“Where’d the three young soldiers go?”

“They left with the punter that started this damn mess.”

“What? When?”

“Don’t know,” Billy replied, “maybe twenty minutes ago, not much more.”

“Oh Jaysus,” his father said, bat sliding to the floor, “I should ha’ known.”

Billy cocked a sandy eyebrow. “Known what Da’?”

“The whole thing,” he gestured helplessly at the mess that surrounded him, “’twas done on purpose.”

Billy looked at his father quizzically. “Don’t worry Da’ we’ll find the bastard an’ make him pay for the damage.”

Denny shook his head. “Send the bill to the local Sinn Fein office then, I hear that’s where the IRA is pickin’ up their mail these days.”

“Ye think he was IRA?” Billy asked, the full ramifications of the situation suddenly dawning on him.

“Aye, an’ those poor lads went with him. May God have mercy on their souls.”

SANDY WOKE TO THE DARKEST night he’d ever known, bladder uncomfortably full, mouth feeling as though it was filled with damp cotton and the smell of cigarette smoke strong in his nostrils. It took a moment or two to clear the fog in his head, to realize where he was and how he’d gotten there.

Ahead of him the tip of a cigarette glowed hot red, like a coal in a cave. The car was going slow through a series of large potholes.

Where the hell were they? The thought was accompanied by a surge of nausea and he had to swallow back a hot stream of bile that bit at the back of his throat. Behind them the headlights of the other men had disappeared.

“Where are we?” he asked, the words emerging in a dry croak. Beside him Donny’s head lolled against the seat, his red hair visible even in the dark.

“Shortcut to Ballymena,” their driver replied, swerving abruptly to avoid something in the roadway. He must have the eyes of a cat on him to see anything in this light, Sandy thought, putting a hand out to steady himself against the swaying car.

“Pull over would ye man?” Neil said from his position in the front passenger seat, “I’ve got to piss somethin’ terrible.”